


Thirty One

by AlmondRose



Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
Genre: M/M, clark meeting the batkids, jason's display case, oh well, steph was robin, this is probably terrible
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-29 14:46:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7688524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlmondRose/pseuds/AlmondRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clark Kent finds himself coming to Bruce's house all the time after returning from the dead. It turns out Bruce was not as lonely as he thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thirty One

 

Clark comes back to life. Of course the first thing he does is almost give his ma a heart attack, then she hugs him so tight she’d probably crack his ribs if he wasn’t invincible. 

 

He stays with her for weeks, helping at the farm and recovering. He wants to rejoin society, but he’s not sure how since he’s, you know, legally dead. 

 

\---

 

When Clark feels up to it, after he’s been back for three months, he goes to Lois’s house. He dresses in flannel and jeans, with glasses, and he’s grown a bit of a beard (so nobody in Metropolis would recognize him at first glance). He knocks on her apartment door, and some man opens the door. 

 

“Can I help you?” The guy looks comfortable, and Clark feels, fleetingly, wildly jealous. He tries to hide it. 

 

“Yeah, may I speak to Lois?”

 

“Sure,” the stranger says easily. “May I ask your name?”

 

“Um, sure, it’s--” Clark searches for something to say. “Jonathan.” 

 

“Okay,” the guy says. “Be right back.” He vanishes into the apartment. Clark can hear, with his super-hearing, the guy telling Lois that Jonathan's here to see her. 

 

“I don’t know any Jonathans,” Lois grumbles but she goes to the door anyway. She opens the door and stares at Clark. He smiles sheepishly. 

 

“Surprise?” He’s not surprised at all when her fist connects with his ribs. She winces and holds her fist. 

 

“‘Surprise?’” she hisses. “ _ Surprise _ ? You show up after--after  _ years  _ looking like a--like a hipster lumberjack, and you say  _ surprise _ ? You were dead!” 

 

“I know,” Clark says. “And now I’m not.” Her face shifts, and she starts to cry, and Clark pulls her into a hug, and holds her. 

 

He discovers that Lois had been slowly dipping her toe in the dating pool again--the guy who answered the door she had been dating for a few months now. She starts to apologize, but Clark holds up his hand and tells her that he understands. He’s sad, of course, but he does understand. He’s glad she’s gotten over him. She kisses him one last time, and he leaves, promising to keep up with her. 

 

\---

 

He’s not sure why, but fifteen minutes later he finds himself standing on Bruce Wayne’s doorstep, holding his hand up to knock. He falters. 

 

Why should he be here? Why should he come back here of all places? He’s about to turn around and leave, but he doesn’t get five steps away before a motorcycle pulls up and a man hops off. Clark’s not sure how to escape at this point. Super speed, maybe, but the man takes off his helmet and turns to look at him, and now there’s no escape. 

 

“Hold on a second,” the man says. He’s younger than Bruce, younger than Clark, and he has dark hair and blue eyes, and when he walks over to Clark he looks perfectly comfortable being on the front lawn of a billionaire. He looks Clark up and down, then shrugs. 

 

“Okay then,” he says. “Follow me.” Clark follows, not sure what else to do. The man twirls keys around his fingers, and unlocks the front door. He tells Clark to come in. Clark follows. 

 

“Alfred!” the man calls, and nobody answers. He rolls his eyes. “They’ll be downstairs, then.”

 

“What?” Clark asks. “Downstairs?” 

 

“Yeah,” he says. “Come on.” The man leads Clark to a wall, which he then proceeds to open, revealing a staircase descending into a dark pit. Clark’s taken aback. The man hops down the stairs while Clark hovers, uncertainly. 

 

“You can come down here,” the man says, halfway down the stairs. Clark follows, feeling confused.  

 

“Bruce!” the guy yells. “You have a guest!” Clark hears an answering grunt, then the stairs are done and Clark’s in an impressive cave system. He looks around. The Batmobile is there, as is a giant computer system. There’s glass cases of suits all around the room, including one that’s graffitied and has a solemn air to it. There’s an elderly man tinkering around at the Batmobile. And Bruce Wayne is at the computer, in sweatpants and a t-shirt. The man Clark’s been following heads to a fridge on the cave wall, passing the elderly man and saying, “Hey Alfie.”

 

“Hello, Master Dick,” the old man says, and Clark blinks away from him and takes a step toward Bruce, shuffling his feet awkwardly. Bruce half turns from his computer. 

 

“You’re alive,” he says. Clark nods, even though he’s not sure Bruce can see him.

 

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I am.”

 

“And you’re in my Batcave,” Bruce says, his voice ringing with an accusing tone. Clark blushes, but Dick interjects, loudly, “Come on, I wasn’t going to leave  _ Superman _ standing alone outside your house because you didn’t answer the door.”

 

“He didn’t knock,” Bruce says, sounding slightly wounded, like, “ _ Of course _ I was going to let Superman in”. Nither Clark nor Dick know how to respond to that. 

 

\---

 

The next time Clark visits the Batcave, Bruce is alone, punching a punching bag. Clark stands behind him and watches. It looks fluid, easy. Clark wonders if he looks like that when he punches. 

 

When Bruce is done, he turns to face Clark, his expression unreadable. 

 

“I’m starting a team,” he says finally. “Of other metas and so-called superheroes.”

 

“Okay,” Clark says. “How many do you have?”

 

“Three,” Bruce says. “Diana, Barry, and Victor. I think--I think Arthur’s warming up to me.” Clark is pretty sure he knows who Diana is, the girl who fought with them the night--the night he died, but he’s not sure who the other three are. 

 

“What about Dick?” he asks instead of vocalizing this. Bruce visibly stiffens. 

 

“What about him?”

 

“Is he joining the team?”

 

“No,” Bruce says fiercely. This surprises Clark. Of course, he’s not entirely sure who Dick is, exactly, but during the last visit Dick did flips and training exercises almost the whole time, so Clark knows he must be some sort of superhero. Or vigilante, whatever. 

 

“Why not?”

 

“I can’t--he can’t--just. He can’t.” Bruce doesn’t give him anything better than that. 

 

“Do you want me to join this team?” he asks, hesitantly. 

 

“Maybe,” Bruce says gruffly. “If you want.” 

 

“I thought Superman was a menace?”

 

“I was wrong,” Bruce says, quickly. “He isn’t--you aren’t a menace at all.”    

 

\---

 

Every time Clark returns to the Cave, he asks about things. He learns that Dick is Nightwing. He learns that this cave isn’t even as impressive as the first cave, under the ruins of Wayne Manor. He learns that Alfred has been with the Waynes from before Bruce was born, that Alfred’s almost a father to him. He learns a lot of things, but he still can’t ask about the graffitied suit. Someone important  _ died,  _ and Clark isn’t sure he wants to know who.

\---

 

On his sixth visit to the cave, Bruce isn’t there and there’s a young man, early twenties at the most, pacing the cave and rambling to someone on the computer screen. The person on the screen is a woman with red hair and glasses. She looks fondly exasperated. 

 

“I mean, I haven’t slept in three days and the case is almost ready to crack. I can feel it! There’s just--I need your help, O,” the man says, waving his hands. 

 

“I’m not hacking into there for you,” the woman says. “If you can’t hack in there, you should know that it’s probably unethical to be in there at all.”

 

“Please,” the young man wheedles, then the redhead catches sight of Clark, standing there, confused. 

 

“Hey, Food Chain,” she says. “Superman’s behind you.” He turns, quickly, almost falling over. 

 

“Hey there!” he says loudly. “Batman is out right now.” 

 

“Okay,” Clark says. “No offence, but who are you?”

 

“Red Robin,” the man introduces, then he remembers that he’s not wearing a mask. “Tim Drake.” 

 

“Barbara Gordon,” the redhead says. “Oracle.”

 

“I’m Clark Kent,” Clark says, because it’s only fair. 

 

“I know,” Barbara says, amused. “Bruce told us.”

 

“He talked about you a  _ lot,”  _ Tim says, sounding only slightly annoyed. 

 

“He did?” Clark asks, surprised. 

 

“Yeah, when he was obsessed with you being a threat or whatever, and then after you died it was all ‘Oh I did him wrong’ and stuff.”

 

“Oh,” Clark says. “Why weren’t you there, then, back when we were fighting?”

 

“Thought it was stupid,” Tim says, matter-of-fact. “So me and Dick and Damian and Steph and Cass and Babs and Jason all ignored him or tried to talk him out of it.”

 

“Some of us relocated to Bludhaven to make our point,” Barbara says thoughtfully. Clark didn’t know that Bruce had so many friends, so many people with him. It makes him sort of sad.

 

\---

 

His tenth visit has Dick at the cave, talking to Barbara, who is here in real life this time, and apparently in a wheelchair. When she sees him looking, she wheels over to a suit in a case, one that’s gray and yellow, with a cape and a cowl. 

 

“Batgirl,” she says when Clark comes and stands behind her. “I was Batgirl.” Clark’s afraid to ask what happened, why she’s in a wheelchair now. She provides the answer before he can ask, or decide not to ask. “I was shot. Joker.” She doesn’t provide any more explanation, and Clark doesn’t ask for any more. 

 

\---

 

His eleventh visit is in the early hours of the morning, when he’s too tired to talk. He lands and slumps in the chair by the computer, and he watches with half-lidded eyes as Tim and Bruce change out of their suits and head for the showers. A small Asian girl in all black emerges from the showers and comes over to him. She touches his eyes and says, “Sleep.” Absurdly, he does. 

 

When he wakes up, he’s still in the chair and Bruce has pulled up another chair, and is watching him. 

 

\---

 

His next visit is because he heard--he heard Bruce’s heartbeat  _ stop.  _ Just for a second, but it still stopped, and before he knows it he’s at Bruce’s side. Bruce, who’s kneeling over Dick, who’s been shot. Clark wordlessly gathers Nightwing in his arms, and flies him to the cave. Bruce arrives a minute after Clark arrives, and Alfred takes Dick to stitch him up. 

 

Bruce paces and mutters, and Clark realizes the bond between Bruce and Dick must be more than he thought. More than just friends. 

 

And then Tim, and the Asian girl--Cass--come rushing in, and they’re worried too, and Clark still isn’t sure the nature of their relationship.

 

“What are they to you?” Clark asks after Dick wakes up and Tim and Cass hug him and Bruce visibly sags with releif. 

 

“My kids,” Bruce says, quietly, and Clark’s startled but not that startled. 

 

\---

 

The twenty second visit, Bruce roams around the cave, shirtless, and Clark tries not to stare.

 

\---

 

The twenty-fourth visit has Bruce staring at the forbidden case, the one with the graffitied costume. Bruce’s expression is unidentifiable, and Clark comes up behind him and looks at it, too. He’s about to finally ask the question he’s never dared to, finally going to voice his thoughts, but then the door to the cave opens from the house entrance, and Clark turns to see three people coming down the stairs.

 

A big man, bigger even than Bruce but not quite as big as Clark. He has dark hair with a white streak, a leather jacket and leather boots, and an unlit cigarette in between his teeth. A blonde girl, wearing a purple hoodie and shorts and flipflops, smacking on bubble gum obnoxiously, and a boy, fifteen or sixteen, long and lanky and clearly not grown into himself yet, wearing a Nightwing hoodie with a sword strapped to his back  and a grumpy expression on his face. 

 

Bruce doesn’t move from staring at the case. 

 

“We’re baaacckk!” the blonde sings, hopping down the last of the stairs. She taps the case as she walks by, blowing a bubble. The boy follows her, tapping the glass case, too. 

 

“Come on, Bruce, you’re still brooding over that?” the man asks, tapping the case as well. “I’m  _ alive _ , dude. This is all unnecessary.” 

 

“It’s a memoir,” Bruce says. “It helps me think.”

 

“Staring at the costume Jay died in helps you think?” the blonde asked, her mouth hanging open. “I mean, whatever floats your boat, but now I’m kinda glad I don’t have a memorial.” 

 

“Yes you do,” the boy says. “Right there.” He points at two purple costumes, a Batgirl one and another that looks homemade. 

 

“None of those are Robin, D,” she says, then she swivels on her heels to face Clark. “Speaking of the undead….”

 

“Hello,” Clark says. “I’m, um, not sure who any of you are.”

 

“You don’t talk about us?” Jay says, putting his hand over his heart, mock offended. “Geez, Bruce, you might have mentioned us to Superman.”

 

“I talk about you!” Bruce says. “I must have mentioned them.”

 

“No,” Clark says. “I’m Clark.” 

 

“I know,” the blonde says. “I’m Steph, that’s Jason, and the brat is Damian.”

 

“Watch your tongue, wench,” Damain hisses. 

 

“Yeah, yeah,” Steph says, patting his head. “Whatever.” 

 

“Where have you three been?” Bruce asks. “It’s been  _ months.”  _

 

“Out,” Damian says. 

 

“Yeah, it was fun,” Jason says. 

 

“Dead Robins Club, for the win!” Steph says, and she high-fives Jason. Damian leaves her hanging. 

 

“Three Robins have died?” Clark asks, turning to Bruce.

 

(In all honestly, he hadn’t even known there was more than one Robin.)

 

“Only two have  _ actually  _ died,” Bruce says. 

 

“That doesn’t make it better,” Clark says. “Is that why you won’t let Dick join the Justice League?” Bruce doesn’t answer. 

 

“There’s a  _ Justice League?”  _ Jason asks. “Sounds cheesy as hell.”

 

“I know,” Steph says. A beat. “I want in.” 

 

\---

 

Bruce leads Clark outside during the twenty-sixth visit. They walk, hand in hand, to the ruins of Wayne Manor. Bruce picks around and takes Clark to the original Batcave. It  _ is  _ more impressive, with a giant dinosaur and a giant penny and a half-burnt playing card. There’s the ruins of an old computer, and other remains of habitation. 

 

“I should come back here,” Bruce says. “Fix this place up.”

 

“I’d help,” Clark says. “I can lift heavy stuff.” 

 

“I’d like that,” Bruce says, and they look at each other for so long Clark’s sure something will happen, but nothing does. 

 

\----

 

The thirty first visit, Bruce kisses Clark. 

  
And Clark stops counting his visits. 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! comments/kudos are loved!
> 
> hope you enjoyed :)


End file.
